Press room

Press Room - 2016

Blinken OSA’s 2015 Annual Report has been released in a new, online format.2015 was marked with significant changes in the life of OSA, as the institution was renamed following the pledge of generous donation by Vera and Donald Blinken. Successful exhibitions and public programs were organized along with a variety of hosted events, including Blinken OSA’s most significant spin-off program, Verzio Film Festival, attracting a total of more than 15000 people.New acquisitions were added to the already rich collections of the Archives, making them available for researchers and the wider public. Our colleagues participated in workshops and conferences, published in prestigious archival publications, taught courses and provided professional archival service to researchers on and off site.We invite you to browse our report in order to gain an in depth view of our diverse activities: http://ar2015.osaarchivum.org/

kick-OFF: Learning from Poland, Part 1.

Discussing strategies and models of cultural operations that respond to the current political challenges get a strong focus within the upcoming kick-OFF series, a series of discursive events leading up to the 2nd edition of the OFF-Biennale Budapest. In the next kick-OFF event, three art professionals with various background will discuss through specific art projects the changing conditions of artistic production and exhibition making in Poland.

The event will be moderated by Lívia Páldi, member of OFF-Biennale Budapest’s curatorial team.

The event will take place on the 5th of December from 6 PM to 8 PM Venue: the Research Room of the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives. (1st floor) Address: 1051 Budapest, Arany J. Street 32.

The language of the presentations and discussion will be English.

The event is part of the kick-OFF series of the second edition of the OFF-Biennale Budapest.

Supported by the The Adam Mickiewicz InstituteWarsaw and the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, Budapest. Special thanks to Anna Szylar.

New Website on 1956 Hungarian Refugees LaunchedThe Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives launched its new website on the 1956 Hungarian refugees in the United States with the generous support of the Blinken family. The website contains still unexplored or lesser known material (text documents and photographs) from thearchive of the International Rescue Committee at the Hoover Institution and the relevant collections of the National Archives and Records Administration of the US. The Blinken OSA is now making these recently revealed and digitized records available online for scholars and the wider public in both Hungarian and English.The bilingual site, which will be regularly updated is available at: www.refugees1956.orgwww.menekultek1956.org

Daniela Comani: It was me. My Diary 1900–1999 in the Context of the 1956 Revolution in the Western World

October 19 – November 27, 2016

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Goethe-Institut Budapest, in cooperation with the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, presents MY DIARY – YOUR NEWS. It was a deliberate decision to present the exhibition with a perspective that looks back at the days of the revolution from the outside. On one hand in time: the Berlin based Artist, Daniela Comani’s large size art installation entitled It was me depicts the whole of the 20th century through 365 entries of an imaginary diary, while constantly forcing the viewer to take the position of the principal actor. On the other hand we position ourselves outside Hungary to reflect upon the events of 60 years ago. How did the media in other capitals react to the events unfolding in Hungary? Alongside Daniela Comani’s installation, items from OSA’s own collections of newspaper clippings, photos and newsreels document the intensity of reactions all over the world, from Reykjavík to Buenos Aires.

In connection to the exhibition My Diary – Your News the Blinken Open Society Archives present Ildikó Enyedi’s Cannes award winning film. The screening will be followed by a discussion and Q & A with Ildikó Enyedi, director and scriptwriter.

On the last night of the 19th century, two ladies are travelling on Orient Express. Dóra, a high society swindler, sits in the 1st class compartment, while Lili, a committed anarchist, in a 3rd class one. They are twins, but don’t know each other as they got orphaned and separated decades ago. Z., a ‘run-away aristocrat’ falls in love with both of them, and composes ‘the ideal woman’ by forging the two into one. dir.: Ildikó Enyedi / fiction film / Hungarian with English subtitles / 1989 / 99 min

Of all the information and memory professions, the archival field is the one that is most integrally responsible for the long-term preservation of and access to records and other forms of documentation, which are especially instrumental in the lives of people who have found themselves forced to leave their homes and homelands because of oppression, expulsion, war, natural disaster or economic exigency.

The Stabat Mater by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, who died at a tragically young age, will be performed on the 60th anniversary of the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution to commemorate the thousands who died or were wounded and the hundreds of thousands who were forced into exile..

1956 Competition Awards CeremonyThis spring, on the 60th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Blinken OSA launched a series of major public events including two competitions. ‘Encode the Past! 1956 Remixed’ – Student CompetitionThe student competition - launched jointly with Prezi - invited young people under 20 to present the story of the 1956 Revolution through innovative visualization solutions, and/or by developing special software applications, using Blinken OSA’a special digital collections. Let’s Speak the Truth about ‘56 – Teacher CompetitionThe competition invited teachers to present the era of the 1956 revolution - its aspirations, events, consequences as well as the lessons learned- using primary sources from Blinken OSA’a special digital collections including original footage, images, voice recordings and textual documents. This competition accepted two kinds of projects: either a script for a commemorative event at the school or an electronic installation, again to be used in the school.The winners of both calls will be announced at an Award Ceremony on 22 October, 2016, at Blinken OSA. All awarded projects will be published on OSA’s website in October, 2016.

Extracts from Bartók’s letters, lectures and publications. The selected pieces will be presented together with his musical compositions inspired by folk music and the phonograph recordings he made during his journey to Arabia.

Performance by József Gyabronka, actor

Péter Sülyi’s film: Moving Images about Bartók (1988, approximately 25 minutes)Before the screening there will be a talk with the filmmaker.

OSA is making the documentary heritage of István Kemény, outstanding Hungarian sociologist, a leading researcher in poverty and the Roma, publicly accessible. On this occasion OSA is organizing a two-day conference in collaboration with the Voices of the 20th Century Archive and Research Framework, where researchers, professionals, artists and activists reconsider the problem of poverty and exclusion, their significance in today’s society, and outline their vision of the future in this field.

Throughout the two days of the conference unique documents, photos and film excerpts of Kemény’s joint creative work with film director Pál Schiffer will be exhibited, and in the evenings visitors will be welcome to watch documentary film screenings with live discussion. On the two days following workshops will be organized for secondary school students with the participation of homeless activists, in order to sensitize students to the problems of marginalized people and social groups.

OSA PARTICIPATES IN THE CEU WELCOME AFTERNOON A long standing tradition of the Central European University is to begin the academic year with an informal event for students to meet the various support units, CEU’s administration and student support groups.

At the beginning of each academic year The Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) hosts students from the various departments of the Central European University for a full week. The aim of these visits is for students to discover the various research possibilities at the archives.

An exhibition organized by the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives

Vernissage:June 23, 2016 at 6:30 p.m.

23 June – 28 August 2016

Galeria Centralis, Vera and Dondald Blinken Open Society Archives

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Berlin Summer Olympics and the Olimpíada Popular, the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives presents the exhibition Olympics and Politics – Berlin / Barcelona 1936,which examines how these international sporting events became the terrains for ideological and physical battles in the heavily politicised 1930s, and how the two Games acquired different political significance. Using archival sources (newsreel footage, films, photos, etc.), the exhibition views the two-week spectacle of the Berlin Games through the lenses of its counterpart, the Workers’ Olympics, and the war the Nazi ideology so pompously and magnificently promoted through its Olympics.

On June 16-17, 2016, over 25 human rights data professionals (information managers, librarians, documentalists, archivists, lawyers and activists) gathered in the Research Room of the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University (CEU) in Budapest for the 37th annual meeting of the European Coordination Committee on Human Rights Documentation ( ECCHRD ). ECCHRD is an open, informal network of Europe-based institutions and organizations producing, recording, managing and publishing human rights information.

Russian Service Audio Archives of RFE/RL - - Now Online Browse 26 K Russian radio broadcast files for free!The Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University (OSA) presents an online, fully searchable database of audio programs produced by RFE/RL Russian Service during the last half a century.Thanks to the cooperation between BLINKEN OSA, RFE/RL and the Hoover Institution Library & Archives this vast cultural heritage is now open for free & open access.During 2015-2016 OSA systematized, preserved and processed this unique Cold War period audio collection. The archive includes more than 26,000 audio clips broadcast into the Soviet Union and Russian Federation by Radio Svoboda from 1953 (the year the service was established in Munich, West Germany) to 1995 (when RFE/RL moved from Munich to Prague, Czech Republic).

The Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (Blinken OSA), one of the initiators of the open Access movement intends to award a fellowship each year to promising young technology expert, scholar or activist working at the intersection of humanities, social sciences and technologystudies or technological solutions. The fellowship is especially intended for those, with or without degree, who have strong practical skills in developing technological tools to make knowledge and data broadly available to the public; who have an interest in challenging information management practices in libraries and archives; who are ready to contribute to building innovative visual taxonomies or catalogs based on unorthodox ideas; and who can challenge the control of information by governments and publishers to promote civil liberties and online activism.

Call for submissions for students and teachers (in Hungarian only) On the sixtieth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Blinken OSA Archives has launched a series of public projects including two calls for applications for students and teachers. ‘Encode the Past! 1956 Remixed’ – Student Competition Youth under 20 are invited to develop innovative visualization solutions to rethink the events and memory of the 1956 Revolution using the digital collections of the Archives. Let’s Speak the Truth about ‘56 – Competition for History Teachers Teachers are invited create projects that present the 1956 Revolution - the events, the goals, the consequences as well as the lessons learned, using primary sources of information, original footage, images, voice recordings and written documents. Digital resources: http://1956.osaarchivum.org/1956@osaarchivum.org More info: http://www.osaarchivum.org/events/Revolution-Not-Past

Let the Dead Bury Their Own Dead - Public Lecture by Thomas W. Laqueur, University of California, Berkeley

This lecture will discuss why the demand Jesus made of his followers that they leave "the dead to bury the dead" was as radical and impossible to meet when Marx made it as it had been in Biblical times. Or put differently, it is about why the living need the dead in all times and places but especially, for the purposes of this lecture, why and how the dead take on new responsibilities in nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Prime Time Nationalism | The Role of Television Broadcasts/Archives in the Aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars

A conference and workshop organized by the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) focusing on how television influenced and shaped the postwar national identity, recovery and development of the signatory states of the Dayton Agreement, and the lasting effect on their contemporary evolution in the light of a regional reconciliation. At the same time, we will seek to understand and offer new meanings for OSA’s media monitoring collection, which includes state television broadcasts from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and FR Yugoslavia from 1996 to 1999, by looking at OSA’s newly experimented, self-reflexive (re)archiving and the problems it brought up.

The awards of the music competition, launched by the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives and Intermezzo Foundation for talented young Hungarian composers, were presented last Thursday at the Finissage and Awards Gala of the exhibition, Some kind of Opposition, curated by Axel Braun. This event also the premiered winning pieces that were performed by the students of the Hungarian Academy of Music.

At the end of February 2016, the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives and the Intermezzo Foundation invited composers under thirty to submit pieces that had previously not been performed. A unique aspect of the competition was that it specified not only the length of the pieces and the use of instruments but the theme as well. Applicants had full access to the background files and the audio and visual documents of the exhibition for an inspirational base. The composers had one month to write the pieces and send them to the Jury made up of composer Gyula Fekete and Miklós Csemiczky, and conductor Gergely Madaras.

Samizdat ArchivistThe Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archive (Blinken OSA) seeks to employ a full time archivist with a graduate degree in History or related discipline, and a proven experience in archives, libraries. The chosen candidate will work collaboratively under the supervision of the Chief Archivist and in close cooperation with Senior Librarian and Data Specialist, exercising good judgment and initiative, and managing sensitive materials. Knowledge of 20th century East-European history, or a related field is an asset. The position requires native Russian language, it is desirable to have working knowledge of Ukrainian or a major Central Asian language, and proficiency in English language is a must.